Elon Musk's DOGE celebrated more government slashing including hundreds of 'wasteful contracts' to trans farmers worth over $400million - but for one Fox News host the cuts hit a little too close to home.
The Department of Government Efficiency announced on Thursday that they'd 'terminated' another 239 government contracts. DOGE claimed that the cuts had a total ceiling value of $1.7billion.
Jesse Watters, a pro-Trump Fox News host, said that now his sister is likely to be affected by the slashings.
'I just saw some news that Trump took some grants away from Johns Hopkins, where my sister works, now my mom is upset, texting me,' Watters said.
'It'll be a whole family thing. We will have to deal with it over the weekend.'
Johns Hopkins University will be losing 2,200 jobs after USAID funding was cut, according to Axios.
The elimination of the contracts represents a savings of $400 million, according to DOGE.
Earlier this week, Trump's Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins said one of the canceled deals included a $379,000 grant to educate transgender, BIPOC and queer farmers about food justice.
They also listed several National Institute of Health grants that were thrown in the trash.
Vanderbilt University lost a $100,000 grant to study 'social networks' involving 'sexual and gender minorities.'
Another $37,000 was canceled that had been earmarked for the University of Houston to study 'fear of deportation' among 'Latinx young adults.'
The University of Pennsylvania has lost $681,000 for 'social media anti-vaping messages' meant for 'sexual and gender minority teens.'
Also, $225,000 is taken from the University of Colorado to study the 'effects of hormones on headaches in transmasculine adolescents.'
Another vaguely-written contract included $8.5million for consulting on 'fiscal stewardship to improve management and program operations in order to drive innovation and improve efficiency and effectiveness of business services.
The deal was allegedly meant to 'rethink, realign and reskill the workforce; and enhance program delivery through a number of transformational initiatives.'
Musk's DOGE has already slashed staffing at several federal agencies, cut federal spending and in an unprecedented move emailed federal employees asking 'what they got done last week'.
Trump and Musk have argued that the government is wasteful and bloated. DOGE claims it has saved $105 billion in cuts, but it has only publicly documented a fraction of those savings, and its accounting has been plagued by errors.
The Office of Personnel Management (OPM) has led the charge to slash the federal workforce under the Trump administration's Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) but its chief spokesperson appears to be completely off-message.
DOGE has faced intense scrutiny in recent weeks for its chaotic handling of layoffs, particularly its firing of key federal employees only to attempt to rehire them later.
Among those affected were workers responsible for maintaining nuclear weapons sites across the US, a move that has raised serious national security concerns and Musk and his allies are now face mounting pressure to reassess their approach.
Some terminations are part of the Education Department's 'final mission,' alluding to Trump's vow to eliminate the department, which oversees $1.6 trillion in college loans, enforces civil rights laws in schools and provides federal funding for needy districts.
The layoffs would leave the department with 2,183 workers, down from 4,133 when Trump took office in January.
Similar closures served as a precursor to shuttering the headquarters of the US Agency for International Development, the humanitarian aid agency, and the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which protects Americans against unscrupulous lenders.
So far, DOGE has cut more than 100,000 jobs across the 2.3 million-member federal civilian bureaucracy, frozen most foreign aid and canceled thousands of programs and contracts, despite dozens of lawsuits challenging the legality of those moves.
DOGE's blunt approach has frustrated several White House officials and Republican lawmakers, some of whom have confronted angry constituents at town halls.
Trump told department heads last week that they, not Musk, have the final say on staffing, his first notable public move to restrain the Tesla CEO.
All US government agencies have been ordered to come up with large-scale layoff plans by Thursday, setting up the next phase of Trump's cost-cutting campaign.
Several agencies have offered employees payments to retire early to fulfill Trump's demand.
Affected Education Department employees will be placed on administrative leave starting on March 21, the department said.
Other agencies have offered lump-sum payments of up to $25,000 before tax to workers who agree to leave their jobs.
Among these are the Office of Personnel Management, the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services, including its Food and Drug Administration.
